


The Ten-Dollar, Founding Father

by neglectedrainbow



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda, Hamilton - Miranda (Broadway Cast) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Flimsy Character Swap That Doesn't Quite Make Sense Completely (tm), M/M, aham is a broadway performer/writer, alex/john is so canon, chris jackson is our 1st president, i honestly have no idea where this came from, in the caribbean: aham's in the heights, lin-manuel miranda is the father of our financial system, references aplenty, rolllll witthhh itttt, so meta y'all, this is a very bizarre mix of facts and fiction, where is tjeffs?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 00:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6352156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neglectedrainbow/pseuds/neglectedrainbow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander glances down and, for some unknown reason, looks at the bill.  He truly looks at it, registers its color and design, something he’s never done before.  The dude on the front looks pretty cool, with long brown hair and a bit of facial hair.  He’s staring off into space warily, like he’s seeing the future and isn’t particularly liking it.  </p><p>Alex sighs, handing the bill off to the woman and collecting his change.  He can’t stop thinking of him, though, of those dark, intelligent eyes and cunning features.  He turns to Herc as they exit the store, “Hey, do you have any idea who’s on the ten-dollar bill?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ten-Dollar, Founding Father

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from. I just was thinking about modern AU's and how obviously we need Lin-Manuel Miranda as a Founding Father and Alexander Hamilton as a Broadway writer. And now here I am. WARNING: do not think about this too much.

“Nine dollars and seventy-five cents is your total,” the young woman at the register states, smiling kindly. Alex rummages around in his things for a few moments, snatching his wallet. He thumbs through it absently. Nothing. He swears underneath his breath, turning to face the three behind him.

“Anyone have a ten?”

John whips one out immediately, handing it to him. After assuring John that he’ll pay him back as soon as possible, Alexander glances down and, for some unknown reason, looks at the bill. He truly looks at it, registers its color and design, something he’s never done before. The dude on the front looks pretty cool, with long brown hair and a bit of facial hair. He’s staring off into space warily, like he’s seeing the future and isn’t particularly liking it. He looks familiar. Alex sighs, handing the bill off to the woman and collecting his change. He can’t stop thinking about him, though, of those dark, intelligent eyes and cunning features. He turns to Herc as they exit the store, “Hey, do you have any idea who’s on the ten-dollar bill?” 

Mulligan, always the gossip, shrugs and continues to thumb through some British tabloid. 

“Laurens?” Alex tries.

Laurens frowns, “I know we talked about him in school at some point. He had something to do with banking, but… Beyond that, I have absolutely no idea.” 

Lafayette jumps in, smiling broadly. “Please! You all! I cannot believe this. Before I became a citizen, I learned all about him. He did so much for the Revolution! He united the country and forged to end America’s debt. He created the national bank! How can you not know his name?”

“What’s his name, man?” Mulligan says, still looking mildly bored.

“Why, that is Lin-Manuel Miranda, of course! The father of our financial system!”

“Really,” Alex wonders, “he did that much?”

“Yes, of course!” Lafayette frowns. “I mean, I do not know much else, but… I’m sure there’s more. You all know Christopher Jackson of the one dollar bill, yes?”

“Literally everyone knows Chris Jackson,” Mulligan counters. “He’s, like, the most important one.”

“Well! The two were very close. Lin-Manuel Miranda was key to Chris Jackson’s success. If you know one, you must know the other.”

Mulligan shrugs again and puts his magazine away. “Obviously not.”

Lafayette harrumphs. “Well, little Alex, you may research him further, if you’d like.”

Alex ponders this for a second. “You know what, I will.”

So, that day, Alex goes home and, against Mulligan’s greatest protests, manages to locate the most complete biography of the Miranda guy as soon as possible. Some guy named Ron Chernow wrote it, he thinks. Anyway, the next day, at around eight o’clock at night, he starts the book. By ten, he’s more involved than he’d like to admit. By midnight, he is unrelenting. By two in the morning, it’s an obsession, and by four, he already has a plan.

_Lin-Manuel Miranda. My name is Lin-Manuel Miranda. There’s a million things I haven’t done, just you wait._

When John wakes up at eight, Alexander’s still working. Which, of course, appalls John to no end. John then forces him to go to bed, whether or not he’s done with the biography. Little does John know that he finishes it within the next day. Over eight-hundred pages. He isn’t sure if that’s humanly possible, but he’s done it all the same. Immediately after reading the last page, Alex starts the entire thing over from the beginning, this time with a highlighter and Sticky-Notes in his hand.

He only regrets that decision a tiny amount when he’s called in for a weekend performance of “In the Caribbean,” his first (and, in his opinion, wonderful) musical about growing up on the island of Nevis. Sure, he’s tired, but the fuzziness in his brain is definitely worth it. That night, he gives his very best performance despite his exhaustion, filled with the unmistakeable energy of a new idea.

Alex bounds home that night, meeting John at the door, smiling enthusiastically. “Did you know that Lin-Manuel Miranda grew up in Manhattan, just north of us! Inwood! Isn’t that amazing? You never think of New York City as being a colonial town, yet, here we are, with a Founding Father at our fingertips.”

John doesn’t look impressed, but Alexander continues anyway. “And he went to Wesleyan, John. Wesleyan University. Just over in Connecticut! And he knew Chris Jackson! They were friends.”

John finally cracks, breaking a smile. “What else did he do, Alexander?”

And so Alex tells him. Everything. All the details of Lin-Manuel’s brilliant life. They head to bed much too late again, but this time they’re together, and this time John is learning. So. It’s okay, then. Who needs sleep anyway?

“I don’t understand how I’m getting even less sleep now than I did when I was performing on Broadway eight times a week?” Alexander ponders. It’s been two months since “In the Caribbean,” a musical Alex wrote during his college years about growing up on the island of Nevis, ended its official run in New York City. But, it is less than one month from his first official performance at the White House. In front of the President of the United States of America and his family. With new material. So, of course, he is consumed with nervous stress. 

John smiles, "You always manage to do the impossible."

_Talk less, smile more. Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for._

He’s been working solely on writing about Lin-Manuel Miranda since his show officially ended, and he has one complete song at the moment. It’s the title song, a four-minute run-down of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first nineteen years of life. It’s good, but it’s not perfect. Something is missing. Alex stresses himself out and struggles for the next seven days, only barely managing to avoid a breakdown with John’s help, until, abruptly, it all falls into place. He finds his inner Lin-Manuel.

_I’m Anthony Ramos in the place to be, two pints of Sam Adams, but I’m working on three._

Lafayette and Mulligan come over two days before his Presidential Performance (capital letters, he feels, are necessary). He performs in front of them, rapping and singing along with his own piano arrangement. Mulligan looks stunned. “That’s all true?”

“Every word of it,” John replies, smiling proudly at Alexander.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, he really-”

“Yes, Herc,” Alexander says. “Everything happened. You could just read the biography…”

“No way, Hamilton,” Herc replies, shaking his head. “I’ve got enough to deal with without a nine-hundred page book.”

“Eight hundred and eighteen,” Alex corrects. “And the end is mostly citations, anyway.”

Lafayette grins, striding over to sweep Alex off the floor. “You have done so magnificently, mon petit lion,” Laf whispers, spinning Alexander around. “Congratulations.”

Alex’s face burns, and he wiggles for a bite, trying half-heartedly to break free, before relenting and hugging Lafayette back. “Thank you,” he whispers.

John walks over, too, and Alex feels John’s hand press against his back. John presses himself into Alexander’s side, effectively creating a three-person hug. “You’re gonna take over the world, Alex,” John murmurs, directly into his ear.

Alex doesn’t respond, just shoves out a hand and gropes blindly in Hercules’s general direction. “Join us,” he says.

Lafayette pulls away just a fraction, grinning wickedly. “Come on, Hercules, you must participate.”

“Nah, I’m good over here,” Herc responds.

John smiles, replying, “We all know you’re a hugger at heart.”

Hercules huffs, and Alexander can sense a silent conversation passing between Lafayette and Mulligan’s eyes, because, just a few seconds later, Hercules joins them, wrapping his arms around the other three. They stand like that for a few moments, silently, just enjoying each other’s company. Herc sighs, “It’s gonna be awesome.”

“Are you going to admit that Lin-Manuel Miranda was a cool guy, then?” Alex prompts, nudging his toes into Mulligan’s foot.

Hercules lets out a deep breath, like this is all really difficult for him. “Yes, I guess. Lin-Manuel Miranda, our ten-dollar Founding Father, was a cool dude.”

And, with that, Alex has essentially won at life.

_Here comes the General! The pride of Illinois! Here comes the general! Chris Jackson!_

But it just gets better. He performs for the White House, and, despite his endless anxiety and the fact that he almost throws up four times, everything goes well. Better than that, really. It’s amazing, going up and doing what he loves for the most important people in his country. It makes him feel true, complete, up there, educating them all about a truly brilliant man. Sure, the audience laughs at him, wondering vaguely what this Caribbean Broadway performer is doing up on stage rapping about the father of America’s financial system (“Didn’t they ask him to perform his Tony Award-winning musical, not new material?”), but it doesn’t matter; shaking the President’s hand is the proudest moment in his life. 

_My name is Renée Elise Goldsberry. (Lin-Manuel Miranda.) Where’s your fam’ly from? (Unimportant, there’s a million things I haven’t done. Just you wait, just you wait.)_

It goes a bit to the wayside after that. He goes on to reprise his role from "In the Caribbean" in California, Puerto Rico, and New York City for a while, writing a bit along the way. He works on a French translation of Les Miserables with Claude-Michel Schoenberg. He does a lot of television work and some various musical work, until, suddenly, he needs to finish it. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ghost is starting to haunt him, waking him up at two in the morning as a tiny voice in his head yells that if Alexander were Lin, he would’ve finished the musical months ago. So, with a guilty conscience and John’s protests, Alex sneaks out of bed nightly to write in the living room.

_Watch me engagin’ em! Escapin’ em! Enragin’ em! I’m out! (Daveed Diggs!) I go to France for more funds! (Daveed Diggs!) I come back with more guns._

And he spends an entire year writing a single song. But, it has to be perfect. Lin-Manuel Miranda wouldn’t forgive him if it wasn’t perfect.

He reads Ron Chernow’s biography no less than five more times, marking more and more each time. Then he reviews his work, cutting and adding things, working day and night, with John at his side, stroking Alex’s hair as he stresses over perfection. Alexander makes himself sick a few more times, panicking and doubting himself at every turn. But. He has to do this, he has to tell Lin-Manuel’s story. The world needs to know about the ten-dollar, Founding Father.

_It must be nice, it must be nice, with Chris Jackson on your side._

Alex can’t look at ten-dollar bills the same way. He stares at the bill daily. John sighs, “You know, Alex. He kinda looks like you.”

Alex furrows his eyebrows. “I don’t see it.”

_Longing for Renée, missing my wife, that’s when Miss Jasmine Jones walked into my life._

He finishes the first act. It takes a few more years to finish the second, but eventually it happens.

_The world was wide enough, for both Miranda and me…_

And suddenly it’s done. There are revisions, of course, but it’s still done. He can’t believe it. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ghostly voice stops waking him up in the middle of the night. Alex ventures back to Broadway and goes through the process; he speaks to producers, directors, choreographers, actors, musicians, managers, and agents. Another year passes, and then they’re opening off-Broadway.

_(Philipa…) I stop wasting time on tears, I live another fifty years. It’s not enough._

People love it, they flock and send letters and he couldn’t be happier. They move to the Richard Rodgers Theatre, and Alex’s heart seizes. And it’s just the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> SO: here's the deal with the double casting. Phillip Hamilton, a separate actor, plays LMM's son. John Laurens plays the revolutionary Anthony Ramos alone. Maria Reynolds plays Jasmine Jones, but Peggy doesn't have a role (I'm pretending Phillipa and Renee were sisters, only the two of them). And, in the past, Daveed Diggs lead a secret double life, acting as a French nobleman and the third President (which no one figured out, amazingly, because of his various hairstyles). Of course. Daveed is played by Lafayette in the musical (I erased TJeffs from existence, I apologize). WHATEVER MAKES SENSE WITH YOU WORKS TOO. JUST DON'T THINK ABOUT IT TOO HARD OR THE WHOLE AU FALLS APART.
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> Most of their names didn't quite match up syllable-wise (except Daveed Diggs and Lafayette, which, obviously, makes complete sense) but I just rolled with it.
> 
> COMMENTS ARE MY LIFE, LIBERTY, AND PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS! THANK YOU!


End file.
